Construction Office Lifts Off

This sequence of pictures shows a genuine Nigerian construction process one would never see in the U.S. The large building on the right is the new Mission Center Building. It will be ready sometime this year. Two Mission Offices, two Mission President Suites (4 bedrooms each), four small apartments for couples (one will be ours), and two small "hotel" rooms for visiting officials are in this building.

The green and white "trailer" looking structure was originally the construction office. The building and the compound wall, to the left were built and the only way to get the trailer thingy out was to hoist it, straight up, and lift it over the 12'-15' tall posts. One of them is behind the arm of the man on the scaffold in the first picture. The trailer has a cradle assembly under it and the crane is just hooking up in the first picture.

The second picture shows the trailer in the air on the building side of the compound wall. The cradle assemblies can be seen in this second shot.

The third picture shows the trailer at the most precarious position in the sequence. It is higher than the posts and is straddling the wall. An accident at this point would have broken the
trailer and the compound wall. The crane operator and his men on the ground did a great job. You can see their project started gathering spectators. Each of the spectators was very vocal as the project progressed. They expressed their opinions about the wisdom or lack there-of of the moving crew. To the right of where I stood to take the pictures was another group of 8 or 10 spectators keeping their distance.

The flat-bed truck they loaded it on looked to be a relic from World War II. It sounded like a truck and pulled the trailer out, just fine, after it was finally down and tied down.

The fourth picture shows the trailer outside of the compound wall but not yet straight with the flat-bed. The last picture shows the trailer almost down and in the next post it is on the trailer and being moved out.

The part of this whole episode that cracks me up is that this could have been hoisted onto a flat-bed a month ago. The fancy compound wall and posts would not have been there. The tight quarters the crane man and the truck driver had to deal with could have been eliminated. I guess I'm not smart enough to be a Nigerian Construction Superintendent, yet.


The corrugated steel fence you can see behind the truck comes down and goes right back up in sections. It could have been removed and the trailer moved so much easier. I'll quit second guessing them. The office trailer is out and gone.

One last "funny". In the first picture, there is a man in a black shirt on the cab of the Red Fiat Semi-Truck. He was doing many things. The most important and dangerous was lifting all the wires up as the truck and trailer pulled out of our "close". That's a cul-d-sac to most of us. The wires, in most cases, were live. We saw arcing several times. The method for lifting the wires was a "T" shaped stick that he would get under the wires with and hoist them up. There were no stops on the "T" portion of the stick. I could just see one set of wires slip off and that would be lights out for the helper. This stuff goes on almost every day. Enjoy the pictures!